As of July 22, we’re celebrating two years since we acquired1000Museums.com and the associated relationships with the artists and institutions that create and care for the art we all love so much. In those two years we have now given back, mainly in the form of royalties on prints we’ve sold, over $250,000. One-quarter of a million dollars has gone to helping current-day artists, artists estates and art museums big and small further their important missions of community, education, preservation and beauty. Some of the relationships we’re most proud of include:

You may be skeptical, but we love paying royalties. We get so much in return, starting with the ability to offer the highest quality curator-approved prints. The more royalties we pay, not only do artists and museums keep doing great things, but the more product that means we’ve sold. And the more product we’ve sold, the more great art is in the hands of our customers, and the more money we have to work with additional museums and pay still more royalties.

We hope to keep this impressive virtuous circle going indefinitely, paying more and more royalties to more and more institutions. As part of that plan, and to celebrate our two-year successes, through July 22 only, we’re putting all prints on 1000Museums.com on sale for an unheard of 50% off.* Please help us give back the next $250,000 and help yourself to some of the best in fine-art reproductions in the process.

As part of our ongoing 2-year anniversary celebration, the award-winning Art Authority for iPad and iPhone apps are now completely free through this weekend. Just another way we’re giving back to the art community. But free apps are just a very small part of on our giving back, so keep watching this space. Here’s a big hint for you:

The iPhone of course changed everything. When introduced the year before, Apple didn’t allow developers to provide software for it, but they quickly saw the error of their ways and the rest is most certainly history. We couldn’t resist the opportunity to develop iPhone apps, and our iEnvision Web-image browser app was available on day one in the “iTunes App Store” ten years ago.

iEnvision included “bookmarks” to five categories of image sites that we thought displayed particularly well on the iPhone: comics, space photos, newspaper front pages, children’s books and… art! It was a great start for us, and within a month, we broke out the individual built-in categories from iEnvision into individual apps, which we called “Envi apps.” There was “Comic Envi,” “Space Envi”, “News Envi”, “Kid Book Envi” and… “Art Envi.” Many other Envi’s soon followed.

The App Store was a huge success, as was Art Envi in particular. When Apple announced the iPad in early 2010, it was a no-brainer what we were going to implement on Apple’s next groundbreaking device: art, art, art. Art Authority in particular. Art Authority for iPad took Art Envi to the next level, with dozens of times the number of artists and the amount of art, many more ways to search and access the art, and a professionally-designed virtual museum interface. The result: “an experience unlike any other” (the NY Times), which has often sold as the #1 reference app in the App Store. We are proud to have, literally and figuratively, changed art history with our art apps.

Our transition from Macintosh network experts to Art Authority was just getting started. The Art Authority app’s widespread acclaim was noticed by a number of real art authorities, including the Getty Museum’s Stanley Smith and digital printing guru R. Mac Holbert. In early 2016 we got together with Stanley, Mac and other art authorities to form Art Authority LLC. The company had become the app.

Our trip didn’t stop there. E-commerce company Project A had long been associated with Open Door’s efforts, and with their e-commerce know-how, Stanley and Mac’s printing expertise and the app’s access to 100,000+ works of art, we had everything we needed to move Art Authority beyond the app world into selling museum-quality reproductions. Many companies had gone from physical goods to electronic; we went from electronic to physical goods.

The final piece of the puzzle (so far) fell into place when we acquired the assets of art e-commerce pioneer 1000Museums. 1000Museums.com remains the principal site for selling our (physical) wares, and the museum relationships that the site has helped nurture look to be the next big step in what has certainly been a very long, strange 10-year trip. All started by Steve Jobs, the iPhone, and the App Store.

Next up in our Focus series: FocusOnPicasso.com, a site designed to help art lovers explore and obtain reproductions from the different periods and styles of the artist often called the most influential of the 20th century. The site opening is timed to link with the start of the new National Geographic Channel’s “Genius” series, entitled simply “Picasso.” FocusOnPicasso.com lets TV watchers and art lovers everywhere view, learn about and purchase archival reproductions of key works from each of Picasso’s highly varied creative periods.

As with other Art Authority Focus sites, FocusOnPicasso.com provides a succinct overview of major aspects of the subject and makes available museum-approved archival prints of key works of art involved. In addition to exploring by period, users can also browse through Picasso’s works by subject matter as well.

Portions of purchases from Focus sites go back directly to the institutions involved. All Focus sites feature our 1000Museums brand, known for the latest in print-on-demand technology, top-quality archival reproductions, and a broad set of museum and cultural institution relationships. The full 1000Museums print-on-demand line is available at 1000Museums.com.

Art Authority, through our 1000Museums brand, has been helping museums expand the reach of their collections by providing curator-approved archival reproductions from those collections for a decade now. The museums receive increased exposure along with much-needed revenue through royalties on sales, and art lovers get increased access to the art they love. Many others have been helping the art world in similar ways. Today we’re proud to announce that we’re going to be helping one of those helpers.

I Require Art is a “Digital Arts Platform” consisting of a long-established FaceBook page, blog and set of online galleries. Plus as of today, an online store. That’s where we come in. We have been selected by I Require Art to provide archival reproductions for that store. As you’ll see, I Require Art chooses only a few works for which to offer prints, and makes available only the highest quality reproductions of those works. So it was natural that they would look toward 1000Museums’ proven quality record and set of museum relationships.

We are honored that I Require Art chose us to help them help the art world, and we look forward to a long and expanding relationship.

In 1941, at the high point of the Great African-American Migration, Jacob Lawrence created and captioned a sequence of 60 small paintings visually and poignantly portraying that migration. Viewed in its entirety, the series creates a narrative, in pictures and words, which tells the story of that exodus.

Lawrence’s Migration Series was quickly recognized, not just as a representation, but as an essential piece of the ongoing movement. Not just documentation of history, but part of history. Both the Museum of Modern Art and the Phillips Collection competed to purchase the works, which were ultimately split between the two museums, with odd-numbered panels going to the Phillips and even-numbered to MoMA. The split broadened access but made it just about impossible to “read” the whole “story” in order, let alone in its entirety.

On rare occasions, all 60 panels have been exhibited together, most recently in Seattle. But we’ve been unaware of any place in cyberspace where you could acquire the whole story and hang it on your wall. Until now. Art Authority is proud to announce that, as part of Black History Month, we have worked with the Phillips, MoMA and the Lawrence Foundation to make available 1000Museums-brand archival prints of all 60 panels.

As part of our “Best for Last” sale, the award-winning Art Authority for iPad and iPhone apps are completely free this weekend only. We’re hoping all you last-minute Christmas shoppers will use the apps (or the 1000Museums.com web site) to take advantage of the LAST two days you can order our 1000Museums archival prints and get them in time for Christmas* at the BEST sales prices of the year (30% off through promotion code BESTFORLAST).

So, if there’s anyone left on your gift list (and we’re betting there is), please download the apps (if you haven’t already), go to the built-in 1000Museums Gift Shop, and put in your orders. After that you can enjoy the apps for free throughout 2018 and beyond.

*Sorry, but due to our custom processes, only unframed prints shipped in the US will make it in time for Christmas.